The published art reveals a great many attempts to produce structural elements which can satisfactorily and rapidly be joined to form furniture, building structures and the like. Lowinger, Australian Pat. No. 152,959 describes a structural element which is shaped to have a plurality of grooves, adapted to receive correspondingly shaped tongue elements. A similar product is described in Bergstrom Australian Pat. No. 273,442, which discloses a tongue element which is designed to be inserted into grooves in the construction members.
In the case of each of the above prior art techniques, construction time is increased due to the fact that, during assembly, an appropriately shaped member must be selected and slotted together with a differently shaped member. Further, the shape of the elements themselves dictates that an excessive degree of manipulation is required correctly to position respective members during construction.
If, as happens in the prior art systems, the groove widens with wear, the screw can simply be tightened to a fix the support in a rigid position.
However in the prior art system as described, two different supports were used, one type for each pair of grooves. Again it was found that construction time was wasted in having to select an appropriate support in each instance. Further the width of the adjacent face of the construction member were not in a whole number ratio, thus limiting the flexibility of application of the member in practice.